Today, many forms of information are processed for display on a display such as a television. An example of such information is digital television (DTV) information. Processing of DTV information typically involves the use of a memory (e.g., RAM) to store information used during the process of displaying the information on a display and a memory controller. Certain aspects of DTV processing can have characteristics that can be very taxing on the memory controller, which can ultimately lead to higher equipment costs and/or lower performance. For example, one type of processing that DTV information typically undergoes involves scaling an image from one resolution to another. For example, to display an incoming high-definition television (HDTV) signal having a resolution of 1280×720 pixels on a standard definition television set, the video signal should be downscaled to 704×480 pixels.
The amount of information requested from the memory via the memory controller can vary over time depending on the processing operation being performed. For example, vertical downscaling of an image can cause large bandwidth fluctuations from horizontal line to horizontal line, which can lead to exceeding the bandwidth limitations of the memory and the memory controller. Typically, the variable-rate requests to the memory and the memory controller are dealt with by throttling the requests made to the memory and the memory controller. Throttling the memory requests, however, can lead to overall higher system costs because the memory and the memory controller should be able to support the highest average peak bandwidth.